Haaretz
Tamuz 5, 5765
Israel should invest in us now,
and when we join the European Union - we'll repay you, Romanian Foreign
Minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu suggested in an interview with Haaretz
during his visit to Jerusalem last week.
Ungureanu believes that
granting Romania a meaningful role in the Middle East peace process would
serve his country's and Israel's interests.
"It's a sort of a
mutual investment," he explained. "Israel invests political trust and
political meaning into a country that is likely to become a member of the
European Union by January 2007, and Romania in return invests politically
(vis-a-vis its European counterparts), in better knowledge about the
region by means of its bilateral relations with Jerusalem."
The
foreign minister also thinks expertise acquired from Israel would benefit
Romania in its relations with the EU.
Ungureanu returned home
Wednesday after a four-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
His overtures were received with restrained sympathy. There were positive
things, "but it's still early to say anything further," sources
said.
But beyond the foreign minister's proposals, his Israeli
hosts were mostly impressed by Ungureanu himself. At 37, the young
minister has already managed to pursue an impressive academic career in
Judaic studies, although he is not Jewish. He teaches in the Jewish
studies department of the University of Bucharest, and this past year
established a Jewish studies center at Iasi University - while serving as
foreign minister.
Ungureanu's visit left a deep impression on
Israelis who met him, from Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to even the
Israeli bodyguard he was assigned. "We formed a very strong personal
bond," Olmert said. "He's a nice man, intelligent and a great friend of
Israel. In my view he is part of a new generation emerging in Eastern
Europe, completely different from the old generation of
leaders."
Ungureanu's hosts were particularly surprised by his work
in Jewish studies, an interest he says is not personal, but purely
academic. In private talks with Israelis, Ungureanu said he knows Jewish
studies are not considered "very sexy," but he has found the field to be a
scholarly paradise. He wrote his master's thesis in 1993 on post-Talmudic
texts, at St. Cross College, Oxford, and completed his doctoral
dissertation on 19th-century conversions in 2004, partly thanks to grants
from Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study
of Anti-Semitism, which he thanked in a lecture he gave during his visit
here.
On Monday, Ungureanu visited Yeshivat Hakotel in the Jewish
Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, in an effort to meet Rabbi Mordechai
Elon, whose books he had read. The head of the yeshiva was initially taken
aback by the unconventional visit, but hosted Ungureanu for an hour and
invited him to return as a private citizen.
Elon, a prominent
spiritual leader of religious Zionism, is also a vehement opponent of the
disengagement plan. Ungureanu, a staunch advocate of the plan, asked the
rabbi to explain his objections, although he said the visit went beyond
politics.
"I went to the yeshiva also because it is a shrine of
thought that is a house of study," the minister said. "It is more then a
simple gesture - it is paying respect to those who consume their days
interpreting the words of God. I was deeply impressed."
Aside from
meetings with officials, Ungureanu visited Yad Vashem, where he described
the steps Romania has taken over the past 18 months to promote
commemoration of the Holocaust, and lamented that they had been so late in
coming.